Exercise: Abstract illustration

I tried this exercise initially with some music I had on my ipod. When I came round to trying it with Beethoven I was struck by how complex the music was and also how it flowed. I decided to choose the word FLOW to illustrate.

My initial markmaking was in graphite, I did it without looking at the page and as a continuous line. I enlarged an area and experimented with inverting the image. I thought about cutting sections out from the page and replacing sections with blocks of colour. I liked the idea of making the image like this but I felt whilst it would produce a rich, complex image it didn’t invoke the feeling of flow. I also liked the idea of a lighter line on a dark background. I experimented with mark making using inks and marker pens.

I produced a series of coloured lines using brush and coloured inks and then manipulated them in Photoshop and Illustrator. In the end I decided to use a simple image with just one colour against the background.